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How to unbrick Kindle DX

You might wonder why I wrote this new post for a device that has been released for several years (2010 to be exact). Well, let me tell why.

I have got 2 Ipads, 1 Samsung Galaxy tablet and a 6′ Kindle at home, but still I wanted a larger E-ink reader that can last for weeks instead of charging every day. Ipads are just not pleasing for my eyes for reading a long time. I was in big hope for the Plastic Logic Que for the big light reader but it didn’t happen. So when I saw that Amazon bring back the 9.7 inch Kindle DX from grave this year, I decided to get myself one.

The display in Kindle DX are all good except one problem which I didn’t anticipate when I decided to purchase: it is technically Kindle 2 family, which means it doesn’t handles non-Latin characters well. I read a lot in Chinese so it is a big drawback for me. And Amazon seem to stop the development after 2010 (the latest version of the firmware is still 2.5.8 when I write this post). Fortunately, there have been plenty of tutorials online to show how to jailbreak it and install new non-Latin fonts in it.

I followed the steps shown in Link 1. There are some updated files can be found from the second link.

Basically, first update the kindle-jailbreak-0.11.N and kindle-fonts-5.12.N from the first link.

Then replace three files in linkfonts/fonts directory: Serif_Regular.ttf, Serif_Bold.ttf, San_Bold.ttf with the TrueType Font file with Chinese charactors. And then reset the device. It would work.

There was one glitch after several days of usage (I am still not sure about the cause of it yet), the Kindle DX is half bricked (not completely as I can still see the display of the header and screen rotation works fine, but the buttons are not responding at all). I have to research for ways of unbrick it. Here is the result:

Step 1: Hold the power switch until the device go to full blank (it took around 15 seconds for me).